How to make hybrid working a success in your organisation

Hybrid working involves giving people more choice over where to work, and it’s the future most organisations are choosing.

In brief

• Organisations are looking to provide hybrid working to their employees to enable them to continue enjoying the benefits of both remote and in-office work.
• Embedding hybrid working successfully won’t come without its challenges, and these must not be underestimated.
• Leaders and managers will play a pivotal role in the shift to hybrid ways of working.

Hybrid working involves giving people more choice as to where they would like to work, offering a flexible blend of remote and in-office working so that individuals, teams and organisations can be at their best.
 
The pandemic proved that many jobs can be done remotely, prompting people to reflect on their previous working habits and routines. This has led to a step change in employee attitudes to work as demonstrated in the findings of the EY 2021 Work Reimagined Employee Survey:

• 9 out of 10 employees want flexibility in where and when they work.
• 54% of employees are prepared to quit if they aren’t offered the flexibility they want.
• On average, employees expect to work between 2 and 3 days a week remotely after the pandemic.

Employees will have learnt a lot about themselves and how they work best over the past year: which habits feel sustainable and which don’t, what benefits they appreciate about working remotely and what aspects of being in the office they’ve missed.

Hybrid working is about harnessing this shake up and giving people more autonomy to decide how, when and, crucially, where they work best.

The benefits of hybrid working

The strengths and weaknesses of remote and office working have been thoroughly researched in recent years.¹ Each offers considerable benefits to individuals and their organisations, but also challenges. The benefit of hybrid working is that it allows employees and employers to enjoy the ‘best of both’.

Remote working offers reduced commuting time and costs for individuals and a reduced carbon footprint for organisations. On the other hand, in-office working gives individuals faster and easier access to information as well as helping businesses to nurture social learning and idea sharing.

Done right, hybrid working offers all these benefits to individuals and organisations at once by allowing for an appropriate mix of in-person collaboration and focused remote working. However, employees need to be informed, empowered and trusted to make decisions about how best to carry out their jobs.

The challenges to making hybrid working a success

Achieving a win-win-win for individuals, managers and organisations won’t happen organically or by chance. Organisations need to be aware of some of the risks that hybrid working brings and act to avoid them:

1. Levelling the playing field

Humans have a deep-rooted dislike of unfair treatment and the shift to hybrid working is a potential hotbed of perceived injustice. People will want transparency and fairness in how decisions are being made, and managers will need to treat people equitably.

2. Maintaining a healthy hybrid team environment

One of the biggest risks in a hybrid working model is that an ‘us-and-them’ dynamic begins to emerge between those who attend the office regularly and those who base themselves more from home. To keep people unified, biases will need to be kept in check and new norms established.

3. Optimising people’s engagement

Keeping people engaged is the age-old challenge because our engagement levels naturally ebb and flow over time.² In a hybrid world, it will remain challenging for leaders to notice the subtle signs and gauge the overall team morale. Luckily, handling this challenge is nothing new, it’s just a case of dialling up the leadership basics of communication, purpose and goal setting.

4. Championing company culture

For many organisations who were predominantly office-based, the pandemic may have diluted company culture by removing the chance for certain rituals, routines, jokes and more. Moving to hybrid working is a challenge because it requires acceptance from leaders that the future will be culturally different to what it was. That said, it also creates an opportunity to review what aspects of a culture are important to keep and which no longer serve the organisation well.